OMSK,
Western Siberia (BBC Monitoring) Text of report in English by
Russian news agency ITAR-TASS.
The danger
of mercury contamination of the Irtysh river by the Khimprom company
in Pavlodar is on the rise, and more active joint actions by Russia
and Kazakhstan are necessary to prevent it, chief of the main
administration on emergencies for the Omsk Region Vladimir Gurzhey
told ITAR-TASS here today.
According
to Gurzhey, this conclusion was drawn by an intergovernmental
Russian-Kazakh commission on the Irtysh water basin, which has
just completed another stage of its work in Pavlodar.
The Irtysh
is one of the world's biggest trans-border rivers whose waters
cross the Asian continent from China to the Arctic. According
to specialists, some 930 tons of mercury concentrated underground
only seven kilometers from the river on the grounds of the Khimprom
company in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, over 18 years of the company's
operation.
It oozed into
soil to a depth of 20 meters and migrates to the Irtysh under
the influence of ground waters. Mercury intoxication threatens
to deprive not only northeastern Kazakhstan of the main water
source, but also big cities and thousands of towns and villages
in the Omsk and Tyumen regions, Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets
autonomous areas of Russia.
"The
movement of mercury to the Irtysh must be stopped, and then, complete
demercurisation of the Khimprom grounds must be carried out, extracting
all mercury and contaminated soil from the depth," Gurzhey
claimed.
Kazakhstan
and Russia have full understanding on this problem. The Khimprom
grounds were declared a zone of emergency situation. Authorities
are building a filtration screen.
Another 30
observation pits were built in addition to the present 20. However,
this is only the start of a huge amount of work which will tax
enormous resources from the two states.
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